Dog Training Tips
Teaching Your Dog Obedience and More
Once you’ve managed to housebreak your puppy and establish that you are its pack leader, it is time to move on to more advanced dog training attempts. While training your dog, always keep in mind the basics: patience, consistency, the use of a clear, strong voice, and a reward system that is both immediate in nature and not dependent on the distribution of food or treats. Your dog wants to learn and wants to be obedient; all creatures crave dependability and routine and your dog is no exception. Dogs are also quite keen on learning new ways to please and interact with their owners, so teaching them a few additional tricks is something that will be enjoyed by both you and your dog.
When starting any obedience training program, be sure to follow some important steps: first, be patient; no creature learns new behaviors immediately and your dog is no different. Next, make sure you maintain a consistent training schedule same time, same place, everyday. Your dog will learn to associate time to learn with this time and place, curbing its attempts to convert training time into play time. Always immediately reward positive behaviors and don’t do so with doggy treats but with affection and praise. Also be sure to respond to all behaviors positive or negative so your dog learns that its actions, whether good or bad always produce consequences; this means timing is crucial…if you miss the opportunity to correct or reward due to lack of attention, you have missed a golden opportunity to function as your dog’s pack leader.
Establish a set of commands that are always used, and used not only by you but by every member of your household; if everyone uses different verbal commands all you will create is confusion and consternation, leaving the dog unclear as to exactly what is expected of it. Finally, remember that while you need to employ a set daily training schedule, you are never truly not training, especially with the most basic commands such as “Sit” or “Come.”
Once you have mastered the basics of housebreaking and the simpler commands of sitting and/or coming when called, you are free to move on to more advanced dog training scenarios. This is not difficult, as your dog craves mental stimulation as much as it craves physical activity and play. Dogs just like humans become bored and complacent with nothing to do or no new things to explore and learn. Therefore you will have a willing partner in your obedience training endeavors. There is no magic formula to teaching your dog more advanced tricks and behaviors; the recipe for success in doing so is following the same steps you employed in more basic training: patience, consistence, clarity of command, and appropriate reward and punishment for behavior. If a dog fails to learn or be trained it is not because the dog is defective; it is the owner who has failed to fully fulfill their dog ownership responsibilities. In order to ensure you have a happy, healthy, and wanted dog, be willing to invest the necessary time and energy to that end and remember that the dog’s failures are unfortunately more a reflection of your own failure to appropriately train and direct.
